HELLO AND WELCOME! Before you can post your question, you'll have to register -- it's completely free and registered users see less advertising! If you just want to browse through the existing questions, just select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. Otherwise, click here to register!. We highly recommend that you print a copy of our Guide for New Members. Enjoy!

New video card

I'm looking at getting a Radeon 9600pro, but I have an Nforce2 mobo. Will the Radeon work with the Nforce AGP slot? From what I read there was no way to accelerate the port without using a Nvidia card. Does anyone know if this is true or not?
Cheers
CP

Re:New video card

From my rather limited understanding, when you place an agp card into the slot it will automatically turn off the on-board graphics and then start communicating with newly installed agp card. I did a google search and didn't find anything about conflicts between the nforce2 and radeon chips. I didn't look past the second page, so there might be something somewhere. If so, it must not be a major problem.

Update: is your mobo an Epox board? There seems to be some kind of bios related problem between radeons and the mobo. See this website for more details and some useful links.

Re:New video card

Why get a Radeon - the drivers for the high end Radeons (9500 and above) are only available as closed source and ATI's drivers are much worse drivers for Linux than nVidia.

Honestly I used to love Radeons but since ATI has cut off DRI development in favor of their own closed source drivers they have clearly shown that even while they as opposed to nVidia have the opportonity to support 100% open source drivers (nVidia has signed some nasty NDAs while buying up other companies - it is my understanding that ATI is not in this postion) they are unwilling to do so.

So for the best supported cards I would get an nVidia card, even though the Radeons are technically better in some aspects.

Re:New video card

As far as I know, the Nvidia drivers are closed source too. That is why you get that pretty little message saying that the driver will taint the kernel.

I never got my Radeon 7200 to work properly on linux, and I am very happy with my Geforce 4 440. However, I'd say try to check for reviews of the performance of the card under linux, before dismissing it.

Re:New video card

Re:New video card

Well, I've decided not to get the card, but only because it was using 200MHz memory modules, not 300, so it kinda sux. I thought you needed a module to accelerate the host bridge, and one to accelerate the card. And with the Nforce2 chipset the host bridge support is only available in the Nvidia unified driver, so basically you can only use it if you have an Nvidia card. But that was a while ago, so I though it possible that this problem had been solved. I've also read somewhere that the linux support for the cards is very good. I know people who have raved on about how well it worked for them, but then I also know of people who couldn't make it work. It seems to be the same for everything, sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt. My board is an Epox as well so I better see if the card would work with that first I guess.
Cheers
CP

Re:New video card

Nvidia drivers are better in linux.. Not only because they're stable or faster or whatever, but also because of greater support. Look at the NWN linux beta, the first couple (few) didn't work on ATI cards at all. You had Nvidia or you were out of luck. A linux user managed to figure out what to do in order to get ATI cards working and the beta releases now will work with ATI, but nvidia was one up and there was a chance for a while it simply wouldn't work on ATI cards for much longer. Had that one person not figured it out, that could have been what happened.

Now, that's just one game, others are going to come out from different companies and the only thing you can be sure of with games for Linux, is that Nvidia will be supported for sure because Nvidia already has a pretty large market share on linux users who use linux for gaming.

Besides, ATI's track record in the past has been less than gleaming in regards to driver maintenance.. I guess they're supposed to be better now, but I'm not going to place a few hundred dollars on that bet when nvidia has proven itself to me.